April 2019 Mass Cruisers Newsletter

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Mass Cruisers Auto Club Cruisin’ at the speed of fun

April 2019 Mark's Northeast Motorsports Expo

RTS Annual Model Exhibition & Swap Meet

45th Annual World of Wheels

Rick Finamore & Dale Earnhardt Jr.

INSIDE: PRESIDENT’S TAILPIPE CRUZIN RIDING SHOTGUN / AUTO SHOWS & EVENTS

Celebrating 28 Years of Cruisin’ Volume 28 Issue 4

We’re on the Web www.masscruisers.com And

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Contact us by snail mail: P.O. Box 217, Wrentham, MA 02093 Or by email: HO350@comcast.net

We’re on the Web! www.masscruisers.com

Our clubhouse is located at 124 Main Street, Norfolk, behind Dunkin Donuts and across the street from the Police Station. Visitors, guests and those interested in joining the Mass Cruisers Auto Club are welcome to attend one of our monthly meetings held on the third Tuesday of each month.

DIRECTORY

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PRESIDENT’S TAILPIPE

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MARK'S NE MOTORSPORTS EXPO

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RTS MODEL EXHIBITION & SWAP MEET

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45th ANNUAL WORLD OF WHEELS

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SUPPORT OUR ADVERTISERS

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CRUZIN

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RIDING SHOTGUN AUTO SHOWS & EVENTS

Club Officers President: Mark Crichton Vice President: Larry Nyborn

Secretary: Lesley Corda-Majeski Asst. Secretary: John Guravage Treasurer: Kevin Rushlow Asst. Treasurer: Rich Armando At Large Board Member: Steve Huntington

Special Assignments

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Webmaster: Steve Vining

Managing Editor: John Buchanan Newsletter Editor: John Guravage Digital Graphics Editor: Diane Thorton Facebook: Patrick Touhey New Members: Zeke Sawayer Sgts. at Arms: Rick Lawlor John Sturniolo Charity Coord.: Frank Bryant Food Pantry: Bob Wood

By-Laws: Wayne Lestan MAAC Rep: John Buchanan Cruise Nights: Steve Huntington Sponsors: John Buchanan Fred Tierney Club Events: Rich Armando

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President’s Tailpipe

By Mark Crichton

The month seems to fly by. I’m back from Florida and getting ducks in row; talking to Steve Huntington about the new signage for the April 11th opening cruise at the Bass Pro Shops. The new signage will ease the traffic flow out of the lots. Also, thinking about having a special meeting on April 9th, our monthly business meeting night, at a the clubhouse for all members who will be volunteering for the April 11 cruise.

Although too late for press, Lesley will send a notice out to all members for the annual club trailer spring cleaning and golf cart service at Mark’s Auto Upholstery shop in Foxboro.

Coffee & donuts will be provided. If you have any thoughts about other stuff, please contact me personally.

I went to only one car show while in Florida and came across an interesting car, a German Ford T5. In the rest of the world it’s called a Mustang, but in Germany Krupp Industries had trademarked “Mustang” for one of their truck lines that they had been selling for many years. However; Henry Ford, who was known for not only being frugal was also very stubborn, refused to pay Krupp $10,000 to use the the tradename “Mustang” for his new pony cars being sold in the German market. Hence the name “T5” had to be used for the Mustangs exported to Germany although the galloping horse was retained. Here is a picture of the one I saw at that car show in Florida. Examples like this 1966 wound up stateside when returning servicemen who purchased cars while serving in Germany had them shipped back home.

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Mark's Northeast Motorsports Expo

By John Buchanan

The 1st Annual Mark’s Northeast Motorsports Expo car show at the Big E Better Living Center was held from March 8 -10 and it was a winner in my book. Mark Oquisanti, who owns Mark’s Auto Recycling in East Granby, CT and also hosts the huge weekly Mark’s Cruise Nights in East Granby on Monday’s that have been running for the past 23 years took on the former Frank Maratta’s Auto & Race-A-Rama that was dropped by the Big E in 2018. He has transformed it by making it a truly interesting and fun indoor car show to attend in early March. The hour and a half drive out to Springfield was made worthwhile due to unusual variety of vehicles that were displayed in the 123,000 sq. ft. exhibit space. You knew it was going to be something different when you entered facing a huge display replica of a V8 engine with blower and, displayed on either side of the entry aisle, were two 50/60 Ton Rotators. I immediately looked for a friendly car club display table that I could put some of our Bass Pro Shops cruise flyers on and found the Gear Head Mafia Car Club out of Hebron, CT to be amenable.

The Gear Head Mafia Car Club is a five year old club that hosts monthly 4th Sunday cruises from April thru October at Ted’s IGA on CT Rte. 66 off U.S. Route 6 Southeast of Hartford and will be holding their big 4th annual Hot Rod Car Show at the Glastonbury Elks on May 14 with 100% of the proceeds going to provide care packages for our troops. www.geardmafia.org & Facebook.

This show has everything on wheels from custom big rigs to motorcycles, racecars, hot rods, customs and antiques including an replica 1893 Duryea which was a treat to see and enjoy. Of course most of the New England race tracks were also represented with displays, racecars and details about their upcoming 2019 race season schedules.

Intermixed and surrounding the perimeter of the show were a wide variety of auto related vendors including a few of the unusual including a pinstriping booth that the artist demonstrated her art by striping a translucent plastic female body form that would be the pride of any gearhead’s mancave.

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Mark's Northeast Motorsports Expo

By John Buchanan

Continued from page 4 Yep, I’ll make it a point to be back for Mark’s 2nd Annual event next March as will fellow club member Michael Roy who brought his two daughters Amanda and Anna along to the show.

Concurrent with the Motorsports Expo at the Big E was The Great West Springfield Firearm & Knife Show Sale next door in the Young Building for those looking for a two -for day.

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RTS Annual Model Exhibition & Swap Meet

By John Buchanan

The Mass Cruisers continued their support for the hobby of scale model building and collecting at the RTS Annual Model Exhibition & Swap Meet held on Sunday March 17 at the Taunton Holiday Inn off I-495 in the Miles Standish Industrial Park. We started initially several years ago by display some of our club member cars outside the hotel and in recent years provided a trophy to the model or display that our club members felt represented the ultimate achievement in creative craftsmanship. This year swap meet organizer Stu Marcus provided a table for our club members to display their models and provide information about our 2019 Bass Pro Shops cruise season dates at Patriot Place in Foxboro. Steve Huntington coordi-

nated the display table setup with Don Cole, John Sturniolo and Steve providing some of their scale models and Steve & John Buchanan also displaying their valve cover racers which were a radical departure from the typical scale model cars, trucks and diorama’s that are the staple of this model exhibition and swap meet. We also used this opportunity to use the club’s new black table cloth with logos for the display.

This year’s Mass Cruisers pick was an awesome garage scene diorama display that Andrew Koerner of Assonet took four years to build. According to Andrew, he had previously built more than 100 model cars of the famous car builders like the late George Barris.

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RTS Annual Model Exhibition & Swap Meet

By John Buchanan

Continued from page 6 George got tired of building models and sold all of his collection except for a small service station. After taking a short break from model building, he came back to that garage, which was a typical standard model typically used for diorama displays, and took it apart and started the process of creating his own version called “”Swamp Yankee Garage”. Seeing the final result of his four yearlong effort, blew our club’s judges away. The detail was unbelievable right down to the case of Coke bottles sitting on top of the soda machine, grease stains & rags on the service station floor, to

the tiny wrenches and tools of the trade on work benches and in the tool boxes. Of course the cars, motorcycles and a 1970’s era shag wagon van with removable roof also had unbelievable detail workmanship applied and could have each been singularly placed in the 14 other contest classes.

Renewed acquaintances with our old friend Dominic Cardillo a.k.a. the “Doc” was the D.J. and is now in retirement mode; former club member Neal Vanzile, who’s model “Mooneye” dragster was featured in Model magazine; members Tom Damon made the trek down from his Wilton, N.H. digs and John Nunez also made to the show as well as past club President Ed Beatty and Steve Mirabile also stopped by to renew old friendships at the Meet.

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45th Annual World of Wheels

By John Buchanan

The first weekend following the first day of spring is when the ISCA World of Wheels rolls into the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston.

This is a few days after the annual Boston Flower Show moved out; perfect timing. Rick & Debbie Finamore work their buns off every year to put together this great weekend event that includes national show cars competing on the ISCA show car circuit and celebrities, always a feature every year, are included too. This year Dale Earnhardt Jr. was there on Saturday and WWE Superstar Seth Rawlins and Discovery Channel’s Vegas Hot Rods “Welder Up” star Steve Darnell appeared Sunday. Of course my favorite every year is watching the legendary custom car builder Gene Winfield oversee one of the local car clubs transform one of their member’s cars in the Chop Shop garage at the back of the trade center over the weekend.

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Support Our Advertisers

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Riding Shotgun

By Larry Nyborn

As vice president I welcomed the opportunity to sit in for the president while he was gone. Welcome back Mark who is very anxious to get to work. During the past few months I have made an observation of what I would term 'willingness'. There is a willingness on the part of Mark to bring the club to a higher level of efficiency & most importantly fun....a willingness to get rid of the negatives and foster a positive attitude...a willingness to try new activities/venues to encourage more member participation.....a willingness to allow members to showcase & utilize their talents to benefit the club...a willingness to be & do our namesake...CRUISERS....Hold on. It's going to be a great 2 years!

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April 2019

Member meetings are held the 3rd Tuesday of each month.

P.O. Box 217 Wrentham, MA 02093